Least evil presidential candidate

[light_bulb]

has anyone tried to mathematically figure out who is the least evil presidential candidate? if you know where they stand on an issue shouldn't it be easy to pick the best person for the job based on a point system? just wondering why no one has done this yet.

 

[Office_Shredder]

How would you assign the point system? What weighted scale would you give to judge their position based on bills vs. rhetoric? How do you weight how important each topic is?

 

[light_bulb]

scale it between 1-100,

some of the things i'd include would be past performance, promises kept, the amount of changes to be introduced and a scale to rate them based on importance, and a probability rating on which candidate is most likely to keep their promises and have a real chance of winning. of course their would be more metrics.

i'd rate the levels of importance according to an organizational chart going from top down starting with the executive, judical and legislative branch decisions that rank in this order: public welfare, everything else not currently considered hot issues in limbo, limbo issues.

it doesn't have to be complicated, matter of fact I'm thinking this would be a good project before the 2008 election, maybe post it to some news sites.

 

[arunma]

Perhaps if you're a single-issue voter, you could model it with a dirac-delta of magnitude 100?

 

[light_bulb]

this will be homework, i haven't started working with integrals yet i don't want gaussian? type distributions. if i were to allow poeple to vote that would be different, but then it would be a stat based on opinion.

 

[Office_Shredder]

light bulb, the problem is when you say stuff like

some of the things i'd include would be past performance, promises kept, the amount of changes to be introduced and a scale to rate them based on importance, and a probability rating on which candidate is most likely to keep their promises and have a real chance of winning. of course their would be more metrics.

WHO chooses what those weights are? You? Maybe someone else disagrees with you... your hours upon hours of work will be useful only for you individually, because everyone else would balance these differently.

Furthermore, stuff like

i'd rate the levels of importance according to an organizational chart going from top down starting with the executive, judical and legislative branch decisions that rank in this order: public welfare, everything else not currently considered hot issues in limbo, limbo issue

some people just vote along abortion lines, some people vote along gay rights lines, some people vote along gun law lines. Again, each person would have their own scale. A lot of people think public welfare is a much more important issue than the "hot button" topics of abortion and gay rights.

 

[lalbatros]

at least the current president is the worst ever evil ...
the best candidate today should be without any ties with his political family

 

[light_bulb]

office shredder I'm not choosing what the candidates say, the promises they make nor their track record or their positions on issues, i just want to put the numbers together. when I'm done i'll post the results, it's still to early.

 

[Crosson]

It sounds like you are envisioning a database, containing factual data about candidates, together with a retrieval system that accepts a weighting of the issues and returns a ranking of candidates. Here's a start:

http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm

 

[light_bulb]

you really have to comb through that site to get a picture of what's going on, i think most people don't have a single issue that polarizes but the spotlight seems to go to what ever group is making the most noise at that time. i was thinking in terms of some graphs (2 dozen or so) with one that rates wholesomeness. maybe a downloadable commented xls file so people can see how the numbers were put together. that site you posted looks like a great source.